Which PSU do I need?

Majesty00 · Post by **Majesty00** » Tue May 30, 2006 6:52 am

Hello,

I bought a NeoHE 430 some months ago and I am experiencing weird problems now. In fact, I get these problems ever since I installed an ATi Radeon X850XT PE (I was running a 9700 Pro before).

My problem is that my SATA hard drive seems to shut down. If I access it after a while of inactivity, Windows freezes for 30 seconds and the, I can access the drive again. Do I have enough juice with 430W? Is the 16A on the 12V rail simply not enough?

Do you have recommendations? I think I need to get a better or more powerful PSU.

My Config is as follow:
4xATA Drives (80G, 120G, 200G and 250G. Brand: Wester Digital)
1xSATA Drive (80G) (This drive uses an ABIT Serillel2 IDE SATA Adapter)
1xSCSI Drive (20G) (Seagate Barracuda)
2xSCSI CD-ROM (1xHP DVD-305S DVD-ROM, 1xYamaha CRW8824S CD-RW)
1xSATA DVD-/+RW (LG-4163B) (This drive uses an ABIT Serillel2 IDE SATA Adapter)
1xFloppy Drive
Athlon XP 2500+ Mobile @ 3200+
1G of OCZ PC3200 RAM 2-2-2-5 @ Stock Speed
ATi Radeon X850XE PT @ 560/600
Creative Labs SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZS
Adaptec 2940U/UW SCSI Card

TomZ · Post by **TomZ** » Tue May 30, 2006 7:00 pm

Does your bios have any way to monitor the voltage of the 12V supply?

Alternatively, you could use a digital volt meter and measure the 12V supply voltage.

If it is overloaded, the voltage will probably measure to be too low. That might help you pinpoint the problem.

SnooP · Post by **SnooP** » Sat Jun 03, 2006 10:06 pm

First of all the neo HE has a 32A combined 12V rail, which is then split into 3 12V rails each current limited to somewhere between 18-20A (listed as 16A). No issues there. However whats your motherboard, a lot of athlonxp motherboards power the cpu off the 5V rail (indicated by a lack atx12V connector), so if yours is doing that you've got a problem as the neo HE 430w was never designed to run such a system. If thats the case replace the motherboard with one that powers the cpu off the 12V rail (has 4pin atx12V connector).

SnooP · Post by **SnooP** » Sat Jun 03, 2006 10:09 pm

First of all the neo HE has a 32A combined 12V rail, which is then split into 3 12V rails each current limited to somewhere between 18-20A (listed as 16A). Shouldn't be any issues there. Sounds more like software issues to me perhaps. Turn off any power management so they don't spin down (assuming you haven't tried that already).

Modmaven · Post by **Modmaven** » Tue Jun 13, 2006 6:42 am

Woah, hold on. Before you try out that other stuff, check your power settings in the control panel...

Start, (Settings), Control Panel, Power Options...

Now look under "Turn off Hard Disks" by default it is probably set to an hour or something. Set this to never, or several hours. The delay you are experiencing is the drive spinning up after the system powered it down due to inactivity.